Students to interact with Modi on Teacher's Day

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Updated: Aug 31, 2014 15:19 IST

States across the country including those run by non-BJP parties are pulling out all stops to help school children listen to and interact with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on teacher's day in a first of its kind exercise to reach out to students.

States including Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh said they are making "necessary arrangements" for the Prime Minister's telecast including hiring TV sets in schools where there are none.

However, there was an occasional voice of dissent with West Bengal saying many schools do not have the infrastructure for making such arrangements.

"If they (the Centre) give us such instructions, then there is very little time to make arrangements now. Where is the infrastructure in schools," state education minister Partha Chatterjee told PTI.

The initiative has failed to enthuse private schools of Delhi which feel that "forcing" them to make arrangements for it will dampen the celebration of the occasion.

A top official of Tamil Nadu school education department said as of now there are no plans to make arrangements in schools but noted it can be arranged quickly "if warranted".

The idea is to motivate budding brains and activities like these would help improve teacher-student relations, he, however, said.

Modi, during his tenure as the chief minister of Gujarat, used to deliver speeches, which were broadcast live across schools of the state on Teacher's Day, and the Gujarat government has made elaborate arrangements, like every year so that his speech can be shown live across schools of the state.

"This was the successful experiment here (in Gujarat) which is going to be implemented at Centre.

The entire country should be benefited from the success story of Gujarat and that is the reason why it has been planned," Bhupendrasinh Chudasma, education minister of the state told PTI.

"We will facilitate live streaming and interaction in state schools. Since he (Modi) is interacting live we will broadcast it through BISAG (Bhaskaracharya Institute of Space application and Geo-Informatics)," principal secretary, Gujarat education department Arvind Agrawal said.

Modi will give a pep-talk to about 1,000 selected students at the Manekshaw Auditorium here on September 5 and interact with them, taking some questions through a video conferencing facility.

The telecast would start at 3pm and will continue up to 4.45pm. The programme would be beamed live to over 18 lakh government and private schools in the country via all Doordarshan and education channels.